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In BC's Heartland, Healthy Food Can Be Scarce

'Food deserts' blight some rural areas of the province. How to make them bloom with nutrition?

By Colleen Kimmett, 26 Jan 2011, TheTyee.ca

BellaCoola

Once a breadbasket, Bella Coola hosts a Community Supported Agriculture project.

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It's a good day in Dease Lake when a produce truck breaks down on the Cassiar highway.

For residents in and around this remote northern community, fresh produce can be hard to come by, especially in the winter.

So when there's an accident, word goes out and people salvage what they can from the trailer before everything rots, according to Christine Glennie-Visser, regional co-ordinator for the Healthy Eating and Active Living (HEAL) network in northern B.C.

"These are average, regular people," she says. "But what happens in these isolated communities is when the fresh produce arrives, it's descended upon. . . sometimes produce only comes in once or twice a month."

Even amidst scary reports about the cost of skyrocketing food prices and looming shortages, it's hard for most North Americans to fathom what it would be like to find supermarket shelves bare.

But for residents in some of B.C.'s most rural and remote communities, it's not so hard to imagine.

The combination of higher food prices and fewer stores with fresh healthy options is partly what contributes to higher rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes seen in these communities. (Taylor, B.C., the subject of CBC's new Village on a Diet series, for example, has only a convenience store and a fast-food joint at which to buy food.)

It is, in effect, a food desert: a troubling phenomenon that has been studied in urban areas like Detroit and Los Angeles, but much less so in rural areas, according to Deepthi Jayatilaka, provincial manager for food security at the Provincial Health Service Authority.

High prices, vast distances

Generally, a food desert is defined as not having a food outlet within walking distance or within reach of public transportation, says Jayatilaka.

"When you think about a lot of the people in more rural and remote communities, they travel distances of sometimes two hours to get to a grocery store," she says. "We also know that in most remote areas, public transport is almost unheard of. That becomes a significant limitation."

Another significant limitation is income. In 2009, Dieticians of Canada released a report on the cost of food in British Columbia, based on the price of a "nutritious food basket" of 16 basic items.

It found that the average cost to feed a family of four was $872 per month. For a family on social assistance, that's 49 per cent of their monthly income.

In the average city in B.C., the report found, $16.05 would get you four litres of milk, one load of bread, one pound of apples and 10 pounds of potatoes. In a remote community, those items would cost $34.85, 177 per cent more.

"Anecdotally, I have heard that in places like the north, one of the reasons they don't sell healthy food is that there's no market for it," Jayatilaka says. "Employment is scarce, incomes are lower, they may not have the funds to consume the healthier food options, so they're not going to be sold in these stores."

And cheap food is the worst food, notes Glennie-Visser. "We've created a society where it's cheaper to buy a bag of Cheetos than it is to buy a bag of apples."

Subsidize healthy food?

Jayatilaka says that subsidizing healthy food is one possible solution that is discussed frequently in public health circles. After, all, next to air and water, we need healthy food to stay alive. It's a basic human right. But subsidizing healthy food is "certainly not something that's going to go down very easily," she acknowledges.

"Politically, it's a tough pill to swallow. So I think really looking at localization of food is important at this point."

The provincial government has acknowledged there's a problem. In November 2009, Premier Gordon Campbell launched the Produce Availability Initiative (PAI). Part of it was focused at improving supply chains to these communities (a piece of work which is still underway), but the initiative also provided funding to seven remote communities -- Bella Coola, Dease Lake, Telegraph Creek, Masset, Port Clements, Tahsis and Zebellos -- to develop and implement local food projects.

Where PAI grants are paying off

At this stage, it's unclear whether these projects will have a measurable impact on the health of people in these communities. Even if they do, these types of programs typically aren't well evaluated, says Jayatilaka. That's a challenge, especially when it comes to securing future government funding. "There's a tonne of anecdotal evidence that these things work, but a lot of policy decisions get made, especially in health care and places like that, on hard evidence," she says.

Indeed, the people on the ground running these project have good things to say.

In Tahsis, a town of about 500 on the western edge of Vancouver Island, the town's only non-profit, the Tahsis Literacy Society took charge of the PAI grant. Volunteer Michelle Kowalchuk says work was completed this fall on a community garden and greenhouse. Kowalchuk says hopefully by March, a Farm to School salad bar program will be in place at the local school. Through that program, "the community garden will get some money to buy seeds, and farm to school will purchase vegetables from the garden."

"I think it's fantastic," Kowalchuk says of the PAI grant. "Let every rural community have one."

Bella Coola used the grant to develop a Community Supported Agriculture project.

"We talked about a lot of different possibilities," says Dayna Chapman, who helped organize planning meetings through the initiative. "Considerations of the funding was that it had to achievable in one year, it had to be sustainable and it had to actually put more fruits and vegetables into people's reach."

Chapman hopes that by next year the CSA will be able to pay for itself, as well as for some additional infrastructure, such as a root cellar that would keep vegetables throughout the winter. She says what's missing is long-term funding for staff. "We're volunteered to death here. Even for a storage facility, for example, you need someone for maintenance. For now, we'll do the best we can."

But she's also optimistic. "The project opened up a lot of people's eyes to growing more food here," Chapman says. "Bella Coola used to be the breadbasket for the Central Coast. That has all faded away -- but the potential is still there." [Tyee]

Colleen Kimmett researches and writes about food security issues for the non-profit Tyee Solutions Society.

16 Comments:

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  • Fiat lux

    1 year ago

    People have been living and

    People have been living and eating in isolated, rough terrain communities for thousands of years, all over the world, and survived very well. We have done it and are still doing it to a great extent.

    When we bought our land in 1975, it wasn't in the ALR and marked on the official maps as "Not suitable for agriculture". We had it put into the ALR, used to have a large organic market garden and are still growing much of our own foods, especially meats.

    The problem is that fraudulent monetary economic theories have ruined the world's economies, especially the food production systems, brainwashing and misleading people, especially "conservative" politicians, with the acceptance of false values.

    The lowest real cost of any product is the lowest physical, energy/resource, inputs.
    ]
    The "cheap" prices of those imported junkfoods, full of chemicals and preservatives, is in reality, much higher, but the realities are covered up with phony monetary costs.

    The real, physical costs are transferred on the public in the forms of incompetence, the loss of independence, enslavement and the obvious sickness, like diabetes and cancer epidemics that didn't exist even 50 years ago.

    Thanks to the crap economists are brainwashed with in the universities and politicians working for directorships with the multinational corporate mafia.

    Yet people are voting for them, trusting their lies for "prosperity", while tying the ropes of servitude around their own necks.

    Ed Deak.

  • Stewart MacKenzie

    1 year ago

    We have been conditioned for

    We have been conditioned for many years now to hate and fear physical labour and to view farming and food production as "old fashioned" and low on the social scale.

    I remember the expression "dumb farmer" from school in Surrey - which began, basically, as a farming community.

    We now live in a society where most jobs are sedentary and people have to pay to join fitness clubs to work off the fast food blubber.

    Many of the jobs are redundant and unnecessary, the whole structure having been created for distributing wealth to the many who take no part in producing it, so that they can continue to participate in consumer society.

  • Fiat lux

    1 year ago

    We've left Vancouver, after

    We've left Vancouver, after 24 years, in 1979, and as we didn't get paid for our business we sold, luckily the land was paid for, we've lived with our teenager son in 3 little cabins, totaling 300 sq ft. without electricity, phone, running water etc. for 8 1/2 years, building custom furniture and painting with generator power, until we could move into our house.

    Never regretted it for a moment. My wife hasn't been back to Vancouver since 1980 and I since 1988, when I had to deliver something.

    Never want to see the place, or any other city, again. Our freedom is far more precious than the commuting under the pathetic city lights and being poisoned with fumes and supermarket foods.

    Ed Deak.

  • Amor de Cosmos

    1 year ago

    "Heartland" a weasal-word?

    Having grown up in a very proud rural area, I can confirm that never once did I hear use of the term "heartland". My understanding is that it primarily is a term used by urbanists to refer to "everywhere else" in the province.

    Wasn't "heartland" a term introduced by the neo-con forces following Harper's election?

    Whenever I hear it, my natural response is to assume the writer is some city-slicker who just doesn't get it.

    By saying this, no offense is intended towards the writer. I just cringe whenever I hear the term.

  • Skywalker

    1 year ago

    Heartland..

    ...was a term used by the BC Liberals when they discovered rural BC. They used the term because they had no policies to address issue in the regions outside of the lower mainland or the Okanagan so the tried to make us all feel like we were the "center" of their attention (Heartland). In reality they had nothing new and it was all just a political smoke screen. Rural BC is still bleeding jobs and whatever policies the Liberals had just made it worse.

    So yes, Heartland was a weasel word, a cop out, a sham but part of the new era of the Campbell Liberals. There is nowhere to go but up after these guys.

  • Bobbi

    1 year ago

    $872 For a Family of Four

    $872/month for family of 4 is really high. My budget is a hard and fast $750/month for a family of 7.

    The study says nothing about what makes up the basket. Just don't buy things that come pre-made in boxes, once you build a routine it isn't that big of a deal to make most of what you eat and it is so much more nutritious.

    Having lived in the north, some of this just seems like a breakdown in community. Why are people arranging to drive into town together? Doesn't anyone carry UHT milk any more? What about long storage fruits like apples? Root veg keep for months when stored properly. Doesn't anyone can/put by fruit anymore?
    Really you can shop large once per month with a single top up mid month and eat a lot of fresh fruit and veg, it just takes menu planning, which in turn allows you to control your budget.

    Yes I am aware no one can menu plan on $7/month, minimum monthly income is a different conundrum. But there are coping mechanisms and solutions to help ease life in remote areas, including groceries.

  • greengreen

    1 year ago

    Just a note...

    Taylor is about 10 minutes away for Ft. St. John which has the usual plethora of grocery stores and lots of produce-even during the long, cold winter. As is evident from the t.v. show, availability of good food is not really the problem. Education re nutrition and lifestyle changes could/will turn this community around.

  • chuckstraight

    1 year ago

    The Good Life

    Interesting Article. For a good read- check out The Good Life by Scott and Helen Nearing.

  • samuidave (not verified)

    1 year ago

    It is a breath of fresh air...

    to read about how some posters have disengaged themselves economically from the fraudulent machine. Without boring anyone with specific details, my experience and behaviour have been very similar.

    How long will it be before we come to realize everything in life has a natural pace and rhythm?

    I believe that we have allowed fictitious demands and illusory desires to far exceed our natural ability to adapt. We are now completely out of synch with our planet, which sustains our very being. But even worse, we are disconnected from our own behaviour. Without thoughful change, humanity may not live to regret it.

  • Stewart MacKenzie

    1 year ago

    Gatto encore

    I have been reading John Taylor Gatto's "Weapons of Mass Instruction" which has little to do with this topic aside from showing why Sam's post is so accurate and how this state of affairs came to be.

    Those of us who have been too ornery and "unteachable" to "fit in" are a small minority, as the mass brainwashing we receive in school turns most into knee jerk consumers who are pathologically averse to any independent thought process.

    I recommend Gatto's works to anyone wishing to understand WHY the public is so comatose and why the "education" system is the main culprit in bringing about this state of affairs.

    We have raised six children with almost no formal schooling and can attest that while it did not immunize them from blind consumerism, it certainly helped their natural resistance.

    When they have decided to take courses they have generally excelled, and all are among the top workers in their areas, whether baking, carpentry or whatever else they have chosen to do, having all learned a work ethic (which, unfortunately makes them somewhat anomalous or anachronistic in today's workplaces.)

  • jilenium00

    1 year ago

    I imagine the price of food

    I imagine the price of food in rural BC is strongly related to the lack of competition in the supermarket industry. Most towns have only one grocery store. Even in the BC's largest northern city there is a serious lack of competition (there are 4 save-ons and a superstore - the superstore being located in a bit of a transit desert). If governments what to change people's eating habits, they need to lead by example. All those fancy forums, conferences, events, meetings, and service provision that supply food need to be catered by local caterers who purchase from local farmers.

  • Amelia Bellamy-Royds

    1 year ago

    Subsidizing healthy food in remote communities

    ..isn't an outrageous idea. The federal government subsidizes the transport of healthy food to communities in the far North:
    http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/nth/fon/index-eng.asp

    That said, for these not-quite-so-far-North communities where growing local is a valid option, I personally think that investments in greenhouses and cold cellars are better as a long-term solution. If organizers are worried about being "volunteered out", maybe a better system would be a cooperative structure where there is a clearer connection between work put it and food received.

  • Stewart MacKenzie

    1 year ago

    One thing that is available

    One thing that is available in rural areas is land on which to grow food, at prices a tiny fraction of those in urban areas. Living at 2600 feet elevation in the Cariboo on a rocky hillside, we have been able to build a productive garden, not to mention taking advantage of the plentiful natural food (and medicine) supply including mushrooms, berries, etc., to which we have access all around us.

    Depending on the continuation of a system where produce and other food come from thousands of miles away, is naive in light of energy supply issues and other factors.

    Growing food requires dedication and plenty of labour, which keeps us out of the gymnasiums and fitness clubs while providing healthy produce with reliable origins.

    Climate change has added days to our growing seasons. Greenhouses can be built without huge expense if a little ingenuity is used. Ours (10x25 feet) was built from second hand junk in 2002 and is still doing fine.

    For those who don't mind a bit of work in the fall, fruit and other warm weather crops can be shipped anywhere and preserved. We order 500 - 1000 pounds of organic goodies from the farmers of the Similkameen each summer and fall including peaches, cherries, tomatoes, peppers, and so on, and have hundreds of jars in our storage room which carry us through to the next year. By buying in quantity, we pay less than we would for regular chemically treated produce in the supermarkets, and make the farmers happy as well.

    Interestingly, as you get further from the producers the price differential between organic and conventional decreases as freight become a bigger factor.

    We pay around 25 to 30 cents per pound to ship to Quesnel based on ordering a pallet load.

    Those who compare "food baskets" tend to ignore specials, which any intelligent shopper will not do. BC's major chains will sell a given product for almost the same price anywhere in the province - I know, because I've shopped all over BC, that any differences are minor.

    Anyone depending on convenience stores for food is not spending responsibly; even long trips for groceries more than pay for themselves, especially if people cooperate a bit - something we have lost sight of in this individualistic and self centred culture.

  • cboo44

    1 year ago

    People have grown sickeningly lazy

    They have rationalized that "they don't have time" to have a garden and maintain it. They would rather pay exorbitant prices for "convenient" food that has little nutritional value. Their "time" is spent watching a TV, their kids are on their computers. Everyone is FAT. We have a city-sized lot in the "urban Cariboo". We grow our fresh food, we store our root vegetables, we buy free-range and organic meat. We ALL maintained our garden, our kids, physically outgrew their parents by the time they were in their very early teens. Now, my wife and I still grow for ourselves. Our son is a grocery chain store manager..... and has his own garden, our daughter grows "fresh stuff" in an apartment balcony box in Vancouver.

  • RickW

    1 year ago

    Amelia Bellamy-Royds

    Quote:
    Subsidizing healthy food in remote communities.....isn't an outrageous idea. The federal government subsidizes the transport of healthy food to communities in the far North

    Maybe the MLAs could donate their meal allowances towards the "cause". And maybe Ida Chong could lead this charge, followed closely by Mike Farnworth.

  • pwlg

    1 year ago

    Bella Coola

    Nice to see the photo of Bella Coola in the article.

    When I lived there a group of us joined with the food coop FED UP and once a month a few members would travel to Vancouver to put in our time filling orders, including our own, so we could access foods that we could not grow or purchase even at the co-op in Bella Coola.

    It is an unusual place where people can grow agricultural products only seen south. With careful planning and growing, the rich fields of Bella Coola Valley could feed the Central Coast as it once did prior to the advancement of transportation options to the Valley.

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